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Now that we are far from China, my memories start dispersing into a overall picture that is not exactly what China really is. Like so many other people, we were not appreciative of the spitting, nose picking, and staring; however, China is way more than a dirty and polluted country. Nevertheless, as usual, I have an urge to express my complaints. To begin with, let me start off with the staring issue: If I happened to find a magic lamp with a genius and had 3 wishes, one of them would be “I wish Asians to stop staring”. The truth is that even though they mean nothing bad by it, it can create some of the most awkward and uncomfortable situations ever. They stare while you are talking, while you are sitting, standing, lifting your backpack, walking, eating, sleeping, reading, they just won’t stop. A lot of westerners like to read as a pastime, Asians instead of reading stare! They talk about you while doing it, they laugh, and even take close up pictures without even asking.
One afternoon while we were visiting the Tianamen Square in Beijing, a woman pushed her terrified kid towards us, she didn’t intend to make any sort of request, she just shove her kid in our arms and started taking pictures of the screaming child while laughing out loud. It is until you visit this country when you realize that you are part of a minority in the world. They don’t mind being close to each other, looking over your shoulder to analyze your laptop, ipod, book, notebook, or anything personal that you could be holding on your hands. They push their way everywhere, at the beginning it seemed quite difficult to understand their chaos, until one day I decided to act like them.
I started by pushing my way around without no one being bothered; in one occasion, and old woman tried to push her way ahead of me between David and I, but I was in no position to loose my husband in such a crowd so I pushed her away, in great confusion the woman stopped and looked at me with one of the most confused looks I’ve ever seen. The subway is the worse, one day an old man ran into the car throwing himself against my backpack and pushing me around, in response I opposed some resistance and again I received that puzzling look not only from the old man, but from all the people in the subway car. Passing to more positive aspects of their culture, I must say that they are mostly very nice people willing to help and amazingly curious.
I can’t even recount how many times a Chinese person who spoke English approached us while we were having trouble communicating. Young people seem to be forgetting the importance of their culture, but at the same time appear to be more appreciative of values that the western world would consider essential; I don’t exactly view this as something positive, nevertheless is good to see that they are not so eager to exploit natural resources as much as their elders. Most t
ourist towns have a great charm, the same charm that gets a bit obstructed by the innumerable amount of souvenir shops and travel agencies. Several walled cities still preserve their original walls and architecture. In fact, we were told that hundreds of years ago, Beijing was a walled city just like many of the enchanting small towns we visited such as Pingyao and X’ian. It was almost impossible for us to get out of the beaten track in order to find more traditional Chinese environments, cities with multiple story buildings grow amongst the rice fields, new brick walls extend along the train rails, every single living being is tasted to feed their millions, eyes look forward to explore any opportunity for businesses.
We cross the border into Vietnam with a small delay due to the damage that Chinese immigration officials did to my passport in a long attempt to try to discover fake passports. As we normally do, we hold a frustrating bargaining over the price for transportation all the way to Hanoi, the capital of the country. After agreeing in paying 100,000 Dong (120,000 less than what they initially wanted and knowing that locals pay around 50,000 less) we hop in a minivan for a 3 hour ride.
Hanoi is messy, Hanoi is dirty, Hanoi is overcrowded, and chaotic, but remarkably interesting. The architecture of the place delights our eyes after seeing so many neon light buildings in China, the housing structures are narrow 3 or 4 floor rectangles with pieces of decaying paint stained with dark spots over pastel colors. Clothes hang over most constructions and balconies are decorated with many plant pots, animals, cleaning utensils and old bikes.
Motorbikes come from all directions, I didn’t even notice that the roads have stop lights until we got stuck about 5 min in a corner unable to cross the street.
We remained in the city for about 3 days, not having any urge anymore to visit sights, we occupied our time with walking around taking pictures and sitting by the lake to people watch. We both are relatively tired, it delights us to be able to sit around, take naps, read, and pretend that we have a normal life for a few days at a time.
The people in the capital are great picture subjects, families gather to eat on sidewalk restaurants, taxi bikes follow us around trying to get us to make their day’s pay, the colors of shops and markets are outstanding with their shiny objects, colorful fruits, and spices.
More than any other place, Vietnam is the hub for ripping off tourists, every time we intended to purchase something we would be given prices as much as 10 times higher than they should be, often provoking us to leave without even trying to bargain.
Finally, we decided to take an overnight train to the North into Sapa. The train was ok, not as big and stable as the Chinese ones, but it allowed us a goodnight sleep. We got into Lo Cai at 6 am and took a bus 1 hour into the mountainous town of Sapa. Rivers, mountains, and green rice fields reigned over the beautiful landscape; unattended children and women dressed in their traditional outfits walked along the road making it a perfect place for photography lovers.
Annoyed by the behavior of two old tourist women being rude to locals and complaining about everything they could regarding the $2 USD ride in a third world country, we were happy to get off. Sapa appears to be more touristy than we expected, yet gorgeous. We walked around town looking for a hotel, after being harassed by a young woman with a big smile for around 20 min she convinced us to follow her way to a hotel, for only $15USD we get a big room with a fireplace and an incredible view clean of any obstruction towards the mountains. 4 days later I am sitting in the same room comforted by the electric blanket on the bed, the town is entirely covered by a thick fog that causes the humid cold to get into our bones and ruins our view.
We were lucky to have one nice day, which we occupied by renting scooters and driving them to the neighboring villages. We were amazed by the amount of unattended children that play by the roads giving us the perfect opportunity to take portraits without someone trying to sell us something. When we rode into one of the villages in a valley, 2 local women dressed with their traditional clothes talked us into giving them a ride back up to the main road, I had rode a scooter only 3 times before, and this was the first time I rode manual, but just to think that she would have to walk hours uphill in a shitty road was enough to be brave and try. It wasn’t as difficult, she was tiny and the road didn’t allow us to go fast anyway. Her name was Mai Ta, she is only 16 years old and plays a crucial role to help sustain her family, she has no money to buy a motorbike, that’s why she hopes that every time she needs to leave her village to make some money someone like us comes along and gives her a ride. We dropped our passengers off at their destiny and drove off for a couple more hours.
Tomorrow we will take another overnight train back to Hanoi, where we will transfer to another one that goes to Danang, and a bus to a port city called Hoi Ann.
Now that we are far from China, my memories start dispersing into a overall picture that is not exactly what China really is. Like so many other people, we were not appreciative of the spitting, nose picking, and staring; however, China is way more than a dirty and polluted country. Nevertheless, as usual, I have an urge to express my complaints. To begin with, let me start off with the staring issue: If I happened to find a magic lamp with a genius and had 3 wishes, one of them would be “I wish Asians to stop staring”. The truth is that even though they mean nothing bad by it, it can create some of the most awkward and uncomfortable situations ever. They stare while you are talking, while you are sitting, standing, lifting your backpack, walking, eating, sleeping, reading, they just won’t stop. A lot of westerners like to read as a pastime, Asians instead of reading stare! They talk about you while doing it, they laugh, and even take close up pictures without even asking.
One afternoon while we were visiting the Tianamen Square in Beijing, a woman pushed her terrified kid towards us, she didn’t intend to make any sort of request, she just shove her kid in our arms and started taking pictures of the screaming child while laughing out loud. It is until you visit this country when you realize that you are part of a minority in the world. They don’t mind being close to each other, looking over your shoulder to analyze your laptop, ipod, book, notebook, or anything personal that you could be holding on your hands. They push their way everywhere, at the beginning it seemed quite difficult to understand their chaos, until one day I decided to act like them.
I started by pushing my way around without no one being bothered; in one occasion, and old woman tried to push her way ahead of me between David and I, but I was in no position to loose my husband in such a crowd so I pushed her away, in great confusion the woman stopped and looked at me with one of the most confused looks I’ve ever seen. The subway is the worse, one day an old man ran into the car throwing himself against my backpack and pushing me around, in response I opposed some resistance and again I received that puzzling look not only from the old man, but from all the people in the subway car. Passing to more positive aspects of their culture, I must say that they are mostly very nice people willing to help and amazingly curious.
ourist towns have a great charm, the same charm that gets a bit obstructed by the innumerable amount of souvenir shops and travel agencies. Several walled cities still preserve their original walls and architecture. In fact, we were told that hundreds of years ago, Beijing was a walled city just like many of the enchanting small towns we visited such as Pingyao and X’ian. It was almost impossible for us to get out of the beaten track in order to find more traditional Chinese environments, cities with multiple story buildings grow amongst the rice fields, new brick walls extend along the train rails, every single living being is tasted to feed their millions, eyes look forward to explore any opportunity for businesses. 
